Wangari Maathai was a pioneering environmentalist and founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya. In 2003, she was appointed the countrys assistant minister for environment, natural resources and wildlife. In 2004, she became the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel peace prize

At the gathering of the Group of 20 (G20) in
London on 2 April 2009, the world's largest economies reiterated
their commitment to helping Africa in the midst of the global financial crisis.
As a result of the meeting, between $30 and $50 billion
in additional grants and loans will be available to African nations through the
World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. While I welcome the news that
the world financial crisis hasn't pushed Africa off the global agenda, I cannot
help but worry whether this latest tranche of funds will be used effectively by
recipient governments, or if these resources will truly improve the lives of
most Africans.

Wangari Maathai was a pioneering environmentalist and founder of the Green Belt Movement. She was a member of the Kenyan parliament, 2002-07. In 2003, she was appointed the country's assistant minister for environment, natural resources and wildlife; in 2004, she became the first African woman to be awarded the Nobel peace prize

Also by Wangari Maathai in openDemocracy:

"Africans can do it for ourselves" (6 July 2005) Wangari Maathai's latest book is The Challenge for Africa: A New Vision (Random House, 2009) Here's why. Almost half the population of
sub-Saharan Africa lives on less than $1 per day. But while this poverty is at
the root of many of the pressing problems Africa faces, so is the powerlessness of the poor. During the
course of the last forty to fifty years, most Africans, in large measure
because of their leaders' attitudes and policies, have come to believe that
they cannot act on their own behalf. Self-determination and personal and
collective uplift, values embraced by the great majority of Africans in the
period just after independence, have been eroded.

Disempowerment - whether defined in terms of a
lack of self-confidence, apathy, fear, or an inability to take charge of one's
own life - is perhaps the most unrecognised problem in Africa today. To the
disempowered, it seems much easier or even more acceptable to leave one's life
in the hands of third parties (governments, aid agencies, and even God) than to
try to alleviate one's circumstances through one's own effort.

This "syndrome" is a problem that of course
affects far more than Africans, and far more than the poor. Nevertheless, I
have found it to be as substantial a bottleneck to development in Africa as
inadequate infrastructure or bad governance, and it has added an extra weight
to the work of those who want to enable individuals and communities to
better their circumstances.

The corruption and graft that have tainted so
much of Africa's leadership in the post-independence period are well-known; the
misappropriation of funds, outright theft, incompetence, and cronyism that have
characterised too many African governments for decades have been often
catalogued. What perhaps is less well understood is how, because of a failure
of leadership at the top of the social tree, the culture of corruption - and
dependency - has too often eaten its way down to the roots. This theme is explored in my book The
Challenge for Africa: A New Vision (Random House, 2009).

The roots of the problem

How much of a barrier this syndrome is to
Africa's development was brought home to me during the five years
I served as a member of the Kenyan parliament
(2002-07). A single example can make the case.

One day, I was approached by a group of rural
farmers who harvested macadamia nuts. These particular farmers sold their nuts
into the Japanese market through a Kenyan processor and exporter, who did not appear to
be corrupt. The macadamia nuts' wide variety of uses - as seed, food, and fuel
- meant that they were receiving a good price in the market. If a Kenyan
macadamia nut-farmer's trees were already planted and producing nuts to harvest, there was no reason why he should not have succeeded
and become wealthy by rural standards.

For more information on Wangari Maathai's work, see the website of the
Green Belt MovementNonetheless, the farmers were unhappy. When we
met, they explained that, because there was so much money to be made in the
macadamia nuts, their neighbours, also farmers, had begun to steal. Now,
macadamia nuts need to be fully ripe to be ready for processing, and they are
not fully ripe until they fall to the ground. But some people (the farmers told
me) had started shaking the trees before the nuts were ripe, in order to make
them fall; others had begun climbing the trees and picking the nuts even before
they were ripe enough to be shaken from the tree. In the end, the greed had
become so enormous that some individuals had simply crept onto the farmers'
land at night, cut down the trees, and hauled them away, so they could harvest
every single nut for themselves.

Because the nuts were not ready, the thieves
needed - to make best use of their haul - to find ways to make the nuts look
ripe. They would, for example, boil them with tea-leaves to change their
colour. But when the nuts arrived at a quality-control post in the market
outside of Kenya, they were rejected as obviously rotten. The middleman,
furious at this interruption in his export-chain and the potential damage done
to his reputation by the rotten shipment, told the farmers he wouldn't buy any
more macadamia nuts from them in future.

By the time the farmers came to me with their
story, they were desperate. The story of how and why they had lost their once
lucrative market left me astonished at the avarice and shortsightedness of some
members of the community. I indicated that I would try to find another market
for their macadamia nuts, though I didn't hold out much hope. "We can work on
it", I said, "but it looks as if the goose that was laying the golden eggs has
been killed." It was clear, I continued, that it was going to take much more
effort to convince a new market (and a new middleman) of these farmers'
reliability.

The individuals who came to me were not
farmers of the kind familiar in the west - armed with an understanding of
agricultural inputs, international markets, and commodity prices. Indeed, these
farmers were little different from their neighbours who stole the nuts, in the
sense that nearly everyone who lives in rural areas in Africa grows one crop or
another on their land yet often has scant or no information about the product
he grows.

Such farmers may have little or no formal
education, and may therefore be functionally or actually illiterate. Even if they
are able to read or write, they lack access to written materials or the
internet to inform themselves about the crops that are their primary source of
income; and they may never use or even taste what they harvest at all since (as
with macadamia nuts) these don't process and add value to what they themselves
produce. They get little help from the state; the Kenyan government, for
example, has made few efforts to educate the farmer, encouraging him to become
an advocate for his interests, or
empower him in the international marketplace (for example, by forming cooperatives).

Roger Southall, "South Africa's election: a tainted victory" (7 April 2009)
I advised the macadamia nut-farmers to form a
cooperative and work together to get to the bottom of what had happened - find
out who owned the macadamia trees; create a register; then determine who was
selling macadamia nuts even though they had no trees growing on their own land.
I also urged them to start again and this time to instill a discipline among
the growers; in this way, they would produce nuts of sufficient quality so they
mightultimately be able to find
another vendor who would process the macadamia nuts in their own region. This
would, in turn, add value to the nuts - and thus guarantee more earnings - before
they were sold to the middleman, who would then sell them for export.

Unfortunately, I was voted out of parliament before I had a chance to help
the macadamia farmers further. However, my tenure as an MP was long enough to
understand what kept this community of farmers poor: in part the farmers'
ignorance about what they grew, in part their lack of education, in part the
government's failure to support them - but also its own failure to understand
the consequences of its self-destructive actions. Instead of working together
to further the common good of their communities, each person pursued his
individual interests - and all lost.

It didn't have to be this way. The macadamia
nuts were already getting an excellent price on the market, so this group of
farmers could in principle have pooled some of their earnings and made them
available so that more people could buy trees through a low-interest loan. This
would mean more macadamia trees for the community to share in the wealth. True,
this would have had to be a long-term strategy, since macadamia trees require
time to grow; but it would also have reaped dividends within a few years.

However, the thieves wanted the money, and
they wanted it fast. So intoxicated were they with the prospect of selling the
nuts, they were willing to ruin their prospects for further wealth by cutting
down the trees; along the way, they thought nothing of impoverishing their
neighbours by making sure that they could neither harvest another crop from a
particular tree nor be able to make money again from macadamia nuts, even if
they could access the market again. This is how the poor sometimes work against
themselves.

An ethical
revolution

What happened with the macadamia farmers is a
form of corruption. It is no different from a minister demanding a kickback
before issuing someone a license to harvest trees in a protected forest. It
expresses the same willingness to cheat the system; it flies in the face of
commonsense and collective will, and it helps to create a stubborn stereotype
of Africa that discourages those who are genuine and compassionate in
committing their funds or expertise to helping Africa's peoples. The result is
that communities often end up dealing with governments or companies interested
mainly in taking advantage of the vacuum created by the culture of corruption
to extract as many resources as possible at as low a price as they can.

I'm not so naïve as to believe that personal
and collective corruption can ever be wholly eliminated; it will exist as long
as there are selfish people and money to be made. But there are concrete
measures that governments could take to bring about the needed revolution in
ethics, if they were committed to it.

It could start, for example, with an African
president or prime minister saying: "We have a problem in our country and as a
people. We are cheating and undermining ourselves, and we need to change. For
whether it is a policeman bribing a bus driver, or a government minister
receiving a kickback to license a business, or someone stealing someone else's
crops to make a quick penny - we are failing ourselves, our country, those who
came before us, and indeed future generations. I want us as a country to work
on it. And it will start with me, and I will do my best to value honesty in
whatever I do."

This revolution cannot be confined to those at
the top of African societies. Even the poorest and least empowered of Africa's
citizens need to work to end a culture that tolerates systemic corruption and
inefficiency. A critical step is ensuring that poor people are engaged in their
own development, and, by extension, in expanding the democratic space that many
African societies desperately need. Just as communities ought to mobilise to
combat malaria, or HIV/Aids, for instance, so they must work together to
fight the scourges of failed leadership, corruption, and moral blindness.

Such communities could ask themselves: "Do we
feel marginalised? Are we capable of acting in concert to make sure that our
resources are used equitably? Do we recognise the value of belonging to a
state? When we are entrusted to positions of leadership, are we committed to
enhancing the welfare of our fellow citizens?" These are the questions that are
necessary if a society is to function properly. If they are answered honestly
and proactively they can forma
system of governance that can evolve and change to meet the needs of the people
over time.

Because poor people are more likely to be
illiterate, ignored, and feel powerless to act on their own behalf, addressing
these questions requires political and economic commitment, as well as patience
and persistence - from local, national, and international stakeholders - since change does not occur
overnight.

While Africans cannot alter the mistakes and
missteps of the past, they can at least try to avoid them in the future. One
measure to which I would give priority is for children throughout Africa, from
the first grade of primary school through the last year of secondary school, to
be taught the values of justice, fairness, and accountability as part of the
normal curriculum, so they might grow into the leaders and citizens that Africa
needs. Just as new technologies expand the potential for breakthroughs in
computer science and engineering through technical colleges, so advances in
leadership and the application of values must receive similar impetus.

I don't believe that the peoples of Africa are
more accepting of corruption than those in other nations. Africans can - as
history shows many have - rise up and demand an end to inappropriate behavior.
However, they want to know that if they stand up or speak out, then many others
will do the same - especially their leaders, who should be in the forefront of
this revolution in ethics. This is one of the most crucial challenges Africa
faces. Meeting it could secure a value far beyond the dollar amount of any
current or future development assistance.